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Full-Text Articles in Law
Vaccines And Airline Travel: A Federal Role To Protect The Public Health, Christopher Robertson
Vaccines And Airline Travel: A Federal Role To Protect The Public Health, Christopher Robertson
Faculty Scholarship
This Article explores two ways in which airline travel is an important vector for the spread of infectious disease, and argues that airlines have market-based and liability-based reasons to require that passengers be vaccinated. Going further, the Article explores whether the federal government has the legal and constitutional authority — especially under the Commerce Clause — to encourage or mandate that airlines implement such a vaccine screen. By disrupting the spread of disease at key network nodes where individuals interact and then connect with other geographic regions, and by creating another incentive for adult vaccination, an airline vaccine screen could …
Ebola And Human Rights: Post-9/11 Public Health And Safety In Epidemics, George J. Annas
Ebola And Human Rights: Post-9/11 Public Health And Safety In Epidemics, George J. Annas
Faculty Scholarship
In public health practice, the concepts of health and safety are often conflated. However, protecting and promoting health is radically different from protecting and promoting safety. Since 9/11, the distinctions between health and safety have changed and are in the process of merging. In our terrorism-obsessed world, public health has been increasingly militarized and enlisted, often without protest, into the service of protecting the safety of the public and the security of the nation. But safety and security are the proper purposes of law enforcement and the military, not of public health. More importantly, using public health to combat terrorism …
Reconsidering Constitutional Protection For Health Information Privacy, Wendy K. Mariner
Reconsidering Constitutional Protection For Health Information Privacy, Wendy K. Mariner
Faculty Scholarship
What kinds of health information should be reported to government for civil purposes? Several competing trends encourage efforts to reassess the scope of constitutional protection for health information: the social and commercial value of health information; the amount of data held by third parties, from health care providers to internet servers; critiques of the third party doctrine exception to Fourth Amendment protection; and concerns about the loss of privacy. This article describes a variety of civil purposes for which health information is collected today. A close analysis of cases applying the third party doctrine, administrative search principles, and the special …
Health Care And The Myth Of Self-Reliance, Nicole Huberfeld
Health Care And The Myth Of Self-Reliance, Nicole Huberfeld
Faculty Scholarship
Both pillars of the Affordable Care Act that are designed to facilitate universal coverage — the low-income tax subsidy and Medicaid expansion — have been subject to high-profile Supreme Court cases. While in King v. Burwell the Court saved the ACA’s low-income subsidy, in NFIB v. Sebelius the Court frustrated Medicaid expansion, at least temporarily. We argue that there is a deeper story about health care access for the poor. Drawing from the history of the American health care system, vulnerability theory, and demographic data, we demonstrate that all Americans lead subsidized lives and could find themselves quickly moving from …
Criminal Laws On Sex Work And Hiv Transmission: Mapping The Laws, Considering The Consequence, Aziza Ahmed, Sienna Baskin, Anna Forbes
Criminal Laws On Sex Work And Hiv Transmission: Mapping The Laws, Considering The Consequence, Aziza Ahmed, Sienna Baskin, Anna Forbes
Faculty Scholarship
Lawmakers historically justify the mobilization of criminal laws on prostitution and HIV as a means of controlling the spread of disease. Over time, however, public health research has conclusively demonstrated that criminal laws on prostitution and HIV significantly impede the ability of sex workers to access services and to live without the stigma and blame associated with being a transmitter of HIV. In turn, mainstream public health approaches to sex work and HIV emphasize decriminalization as a way to improve the lives of sex workers in need of care, treatment, and services. Our current legal system, which criminalizes both prostitution …
Adjudicating Risk: Aids, Crime, And Culpability, Aziza Ahmed
Adjudicating Risk: Aids, Crime, And Culpability, Aziza Ahmed
Faculty Scholarship
The AIDS epidemic continues to pose significant public health challenges, especially given that the spread of the virus outpaces the AIDS response.1 Importantly, HIV continues to disproportionately impact socially and economically marginalized communities. In countries with concentrated epidemics,2 it is racial minorities, sex workers, men who have sex with men, and drug users who face the brunt of the epidemic.3 In the United States, the data is startling4 : 44% of new infections were among African-Americans, and among African-Americans contracting HIV, 57% were among gay and bisexual men.5 In 2016, the CDC found that one …